Proof of An Unspeakable and Conscious Evil

I believe that there is an implacable evil in the universe, a conscious evil that exists between life and death and which constructs for each of us a personalized living hell with which it torments each and every one of us.

For some people, this living hell may be an eternity on Facebook. For others it may be an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or both who has reappeared and wants to renew the relationship. For some it will be that email out of the blue from an old colleague explaining how much he has always hated you and all the things that he or she has done behind your back to damage your career. Each one of us is different, each one of us will be made to suffer.  We will all have to face his or her own Room 101 and rot in our own individualized hell. ⁽¹⁾ 

This conscious evil will wait, it will bide its time, it will prepare, and then when you let your guard down it will strike. I know this because I have gone before, I have faced this evil. It happened like this.

Apparently, and without meaning to, by going into "computer animation" I had become a "starving artist" and so decided to see if I qualified for state assistance.  This was with great reluctance because I still had a residual self image of being self-supporting in spite of our modern globalized economy.  I have not been very good at bureaucracies in the past, nevertheless I persevered and became qualified for what we used to call “food stamps” but now goes by other names.

It is a good program, by the way, and we should support it. In fact, were I actually an artist who cared about the poor in our society, it would certainly be a good thing to discover just how these sorts of programs work and who is eligible. In this case it is only for those who are truly poor, without income and without savings. But if you are in that category, it will allow you to eat. It wont pay your rent, or keep the power on, but you will eat.

I had not been careful with my paperwork, and I had to go get my Social Security papers and return to the social welfare office and present it. It took a day to get the paperwork, and then I knew it would be most of the day to present the Social Security card and deal with that requirement.

And as I sat, alone, in that dreary office, and waited, penniless, for four hours, this pitiless evil of which I have spoken struck without warning. For there, on the LCD monitors was a “cartoon” to engage the children who waited with me, and there over and over again was a Pixar movie about some cars in the desert.

The Devil's tool ?

Oh cruel fate! Oh despicable evil. To wait until I was down and then force me to watch this movie over and over again while I, a pioneer of computer animation, had been unable to make a living at his craft. To gloat at my (economic) failure, to laugh at my defeat.

Recall that in America, success and failure is judged exclusively by the size of one's bank account.

See, it seemed to be saying, see how worthless you are.

Immediately after this incident, a project started and I no longer qualified for this program.  But even so, I know now that this evil is out there, waiting. I believe it waits for you as well. It waits for all of us. 

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Notes:

1. "Room 101" is a reference to George Orwell's 1984.

Humor in Archaeology

Many Americans see academia as dry and formal, elite and lofty palaces of higher thought staffed by dedicated monk-like professional educators who wouldn't know a good joke if it hit them in the face with a pie.  People whose sense of humor was removed in early childhood. But maybe its just that their sense of humor is on the dry side, with a hint of subtlety foreign to the average American who, in general, like their humor broadly expressed.

This was illustrated in a recent article in the NY Times about an archaeological dig in Gabii, Italy, which is 12 miles away from Rome. The architecture revealed is from approximately 300 BC and is significant because so much of the evidence we have about Rome comes from the Imperial period or by writers of the Imperial period looking back to a Rome they idealized as being simple and unpretentious, inhabited by equally humble and unpretentious Romans. (1)

There are several surprising things about this dig, which the article goes into, but one in particular stands out: whereas in Rome history is layered like a cake, with levels going down a very long way, in Gabii, once the city had its day, it was covered over and forgotten. It is currently lying on undeveloped land. So no Medieval or Rennaisance buildings needed to be moved or conserved. No local pope had robbed the buildings for their materials like happened in Rome. No persnickety Romans to complain that the dig is disturbing the tourists. So this is very lucky indeed, if one is an archaeologist.

But getting back to the topic of our post, on the humor of academics, or at least of archaeologists, the article quotes Christopher Ratte, director of a museum of archaeology in Michigan, who expressed surprise that one could "break new ground" in an area that was so well-researched.

Get it?

 An archaeology dig "breaking new ground"?

I bet no one has ever used that joke in Archaeology before.

NY Times Article on the dig at Gabii

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/science/romes-start-to-architectural-hubris.html?_r=2&

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1. This is extremely doubtful. That Romans were ever modest, noble, and filled with a self-effacing humility is a little hard to believe.

Voting Irregularities in Virginia and the Byrd Organization

When the Republican putsch put the Bush administration into power in this country in 2000, thus ending democracy and destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court in many people's eyes, there were some of us who were, and are, adamant that the issues of voting procedure had gone on far too long and needed to be dealt with now, completely, fairly across districts, and as comprehensively as possible.

To a Southerner who is tired of being bashed by ignorant Westerners and Northerners for being from a "racist part of the world", this was a particularly low moment.   "Fix the fucking voting machines, ok?" we thought to ourselves. This has been going on long enough.

But there have always been voting irregularities in American politics and some elections are more famous for this than others. Important political dynasties were created out of creative control of voting procedures, one need only think of the Daley machine in Chicago to pick one notable example.  The South had their political machines as well of course, and the one in Virginia from the mid 1920's through most of the 1960's was called the "Byrd Organization" led by former governor and US Senator Harry Byrd. These were Southern Democrats of the old school.

Governor and US Senator Harry F Byrd

So one day, sometime in the 1930's, my dad and his first wife went to vote in Virginia Beach, Virginia where they lived. All polling places have publicaly posted a list of who is registered to vote in that precinct and whether they have voted that day or not. This is all to reduce fraud and to increase confidence that the people who vote are eligible to vote and have only voted once.

The father of my dad's first wife had died many years before. But since he was a good democrat, he not only continued to be registered in his precinct, he had also voted that day, demonstrating excellent party loyalty.

I am sure nothing like that happens today, of course.

The Wikipedia page for the Byrd Organization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Organization

Squid Move Postponed

When I lived in NYC, I had the opportunity to work at the American Museum of Natural History as they were building the new Hayden Planetarium. This was also part of the NASA Digital Galaxy Project to build a map of our galaxy for visualization purposes, which will be the subject of later posts.

I have noticed that every interesting project will also have an interesting meeting, memo, whatever that seems to capture the spirit of a project, or of a place.  This project had many such events, memos, etc, not all of them fun.  But the following email, written here from memory, was one of my favorites.  When I received it, I forwarded it without comment to about 10 of my friends and, unusually, I got a response from every one of them.   One of my friends thought at first that the email was about a "squid movie" that had been postponed.

The name below is made up, I do not remember the name of the person who originally sent it.

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To:          all-amnh
Subject:  SQUID MOVE POSTPONED
Date:       July 11, 1999


Due to circumstances that were not entirely foreseen, the giant squid will not be moved on Friday as originally planned.


                     Sincerely, 

                     Rebecca Swanson

                     Research Associate
                     Department of Invertebrates
                     American Museum of Natural History

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Smithsonian Article on the Giant Squid

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Giant-Squid-Dragon-of-the-Deep.html

The American Museum of Natural History

http://www.amnh.org/